Sprouting at the Napa Farmers Market

By Rose Loveall-Sale, Napa Farmer's Market Board Member

There is a new vendor at Napa’s Tuesday farmers market, which is always a great thing for our loyal market customers—and everyone else.  Katy Pomelov, owner of Lifefood Gardens, is a new farmer in Kelseyville, farming on 4.59 acres her family purchased just last May.  Katy thought about farming for a long time, while she was working in the computer industry in the Bay Area for 14 years, cramming her family’s backyard in the Sunset District of San Francisco full of fruit trees and vegetables, and the windowsills filled with sprouts and micro-greens of many vegetables. After being laid off last year, she decided to pursue her dream and move to the country.

For her first year of business, Katy decided to concentrate on growing micro-greens of many vegetables, herbs and greens.  This is great for us, since it is difficult to find high quality micro-greens, or much of a selection.  She grows wheat grass, curly cress, broccoli, red and green kale, tatsoi, mustard, sunflower, Napa cabbage, onion, dill, buckwheat , a spicy salad mix and more.  She grows in trays, and most of the greens are available in 1/8-tray amounts, freshly cut for you right at the market!  She hasn’t forgotten about the kitties either, so you can pick up fresh kitty greens, giving your kitties a tasty and nutritious surprise.

Sunflower Sprouts

Not only are Katy’s micro-greens a new product for the Napa Farmers Market, so are her growing practices.  She uses organic soil and seed, and waters her greens twice daily with a sea salt solution.  This is not the sea salt we use for cooking but a sea salt that is sundried with no rain during the drying process, thus retaining all of the 90 trace minerals.  If you like wheat grass, her ‘Ocean Grown’ wheat grass has all 90 trace minerals available, a terrific boost to your juice or smoothie!

Katy is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about her growing practices, and after talking to her for a few minutes I had to read more about Dr. Maynard Murray’s pioneering work using sea solids to irrigate croplands and Katy’s mentor, Donald Jansen’s more recent work .  Be sure to stop by and ask her more about how she grows her delicious micro-greens. It is fascinating, and we are lucky to have her greens  available for us to enjoy!

Katy loves to make wraps with her micro greens.  She makes a blended nut butter with walnuts, sunflowers, olive oil, sesame oil, hemp oil, dried herbs, bell pepper and onion, spread on a wrap with cabbage leaves, micro greens, avocado, tomato and peppers – a delicious high protein vegetarian lunch!

Green Smoothie

¾ cup almond milk
1 handful kale leaves, with ribs and stems removed
1 handful baby spinach leaves
½  pear or banana
2 tbsp almond butter
1 tbsp ground flax
½ cup sprouts or micro greens, your choice
Whirl all ingredients together in a blender until smooth, adding more almond milk until desired consistency is reached.

The Napa Farmers Market is every Tuesday and Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to noon through October in the Oxbow Public Market lot. The market is WIC-certified and accepts EBT.